


equal exchange does not apply

by bakunonist



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Relationship Study, my thinly veiled attempt to talk about my elric brother hcs, roy just wants to understand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakunonist/pseuds/bakunonist
Summary: “I don’t regret it,” Ed says quietly. “It’s different. With me and Al. It’s different.”
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 10
Kudos: 100





	equal exchange does not apply

**Author's Note:**

> i have had many a brain worm regarding FMAB lately; this fic was birthed from one. and, warning: nothing really happens and they just talk but. honestly. i like how this came out
> 
> **major series spoilers ahead**

“Hey, Ed,” Roy asks one night, twirling a strand of Ed’s blond hair.

Ed turns to look at him. The bastard has an unreadable look on his face; it’s strange, because Mustang is nothing if not _readable._ It was obvious that he wanted to become Fuhrer even when Bradley was still alive, just as it was obvious he wanted to get into Ed’s pants even when Ed was _fifteen._ He never hides his true intentions; he doesn’t know how to. But now, Ed can’t quite seem to figure out what this is all about.

Reluctantly, he glances at the journal in his hands—a collection of Al’s letters from Xing detailing what he’s learned about the Dragon’s Pulse and how to harness its energy—and puts it aside on the table.

“What?”

Roy’s face twists up again, but he doesn’t say anything, back to the headboard, side pressing against Ed’s.

Ed is getting annoyed. “Oi, you better not be breaking up with me or some stupid shit—”

Roy grabs both of Ed’s hands, a desperate look on his face. “No, no—Ed, I would never.” 

Ed’s heart leaps into his throat—really, he was just joking, but Roy seems to have taken him _seriously._ God, the fact that _the_ Roy Mustang—the last flame alchemist, the notorious, ambitious upstart still climbing his way up the ranks, the (former) playboy extraordinaire of the military—is actually a sappy fucking romantic who likes to hold hands and say _I love you_ during sex is still something that Ed can’t quite believe.

“What is then?” Ed grunts out, scowling. 

“I’ve been wondering about something.” Roy’s face is still all torn up and twisted, and if it was anyone else making this face, Ed would think he’s about to cry.

“Spit it out, Roy.”

A number of possibilities run through Edward’s head in the time that it takes Roy to actually get on with it. _Do you think I can actually make Fuhrer?_ (Somehow, yes, he actually does.) _Is your brother actually dating a Xingese princess?_ (Somehow, by some strange turn of events, yes, yes he actually is.) _Does Major General Armstrong actually hate me?_ (If there was one thing in the entire world that Ed is sure about, it’s that Major General Armstrong would sooner sit down for tea with the leader of Drachma than with Roy Mustang.)

None of those questions are asked, however.

Roy chokes out the words, like he can’t bear to keep them inside anymore.

“Do you regret it?”

Unconsciously, Ed’s right hand grabs the bed sheets, fabric curled up in calloused flesh. “You better not be asking the question I think you’re asking—”

“I am,” Roy says, more resolute than he’s sounded all evening.

And Ed—

“What the _fuck,_ Mustang?” he growls, taking a handful of Roy’s shirt with his free hand, knuckles white and tense, eyes amber-dark.

“Ed, I’m just— _wondering._ I’ve been wondering.” His voice is slow, quiet, like he’s trying to calm Ed down, but it just makes Ed angrier.

It’s been almost three years since the Promised Day, two since they’ve gotten together, one since Ed took a short trip to Creta and Al took a long one to Xing—one he’s still not back from. It’s been three years since Ed gave up his alchemy for Al’s _everything,_ and Roy—here Roy is asking if Ed _regrets_ it. 

“How fucking _dare you—”_

“Ed,” Roy says again, eyes pleading, apologetic, and wanting to understand. Ed hates—admires, loves—that about him. How he’s always trying to understand, always trying to _help._

“Why the fuck are you wondering this?” Ed spits out. There’s less vitriol in his voice, and his hands start to unfurl, but it still hurts—hurts, that Roy would even think to ask this. “After all this fucking time, why is this even a question? It was worth it, of course it was fucking worth it—” 

“It—” Roy sucks in a breath, and it sounds like it hurts, sounds like he’s hurting too. “I’m not asking if it was _worth it,_ because I know it was. I know your brother means the world to you—”

“Yeah, he does. So why _wouldn’t_ I give up my world for him?”

In any case, Ed would rather be alchemy-less than _Al-_ less. One is worth _much_ more than the other, even if the Gate sees them as equals.

Roy’s face softens, and he lets out a sad breath. Ed resists the urge to punch him in the gut.

“I’m not asking if you would do anything differently, either,” Roy murmurs, bringing a hand up to tuck a lock of hair behind Ed’s ear. Gentle, careful. The pad of his index finger touches Ed’s cheek, and Ed feels tingles all throughout his body. “Maybe I worded it wrong.”

“How else would you fucking word it, Mustang? Oh, Edward, do you regret bringing your brother back from beyond the Gate if it meant you could’ve kept your alchemy—”

“Sometimes, I regret not killing Envy.”

A quiet, bone-deep ache. Perfect circles drawn in white chalk, the floor stained with blood and sludge and something _wrong._ Flesh and teeth and hair all the wrong color, all the wrong smell. Ed has many regrets in his life, but Al—bringing back Al could never be one of them.

But, but—

“I know it was the right choice not to. I know that—if I had, some part of me would’ve just—just _broke,_ and I wouldn’t’ve come back from it. The hatred, the anger, all of it. I know it was the right choice, and Maes—he would’ve _killed_ me if I’d killed Envy.” Roy laughs a little at that, and Ed’s heart beats—beats—beats. Then he goes on: “But I wonder, sometimes. I wonder if—”

“If it would’ve been better to have broken all the way, rather than just a little,” Ed finishes.

Roy’s eyes widen, brows lifting.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Ed sighs, playing with the ends of his hair with a frown. He’ll never understand what Roy finds so appealing about his hair. “It’s just a theory. Am I right?”

This isn’t about Roy and Envy—Ed knows that much. He knows that Roy just needed an _in,_ and it _would’ve_ worked—talking about himself to get _Ed_ to talk about himself—but Ed has spent all of the last seven years learning how to avoid talking about his own feelings.

And the thing is, Ed knows Roy better than he knows himself, knows what’s going on in Roy’s head more than he knows what’s going on in his own.

A quiet exhale, soft laughter, and then, “Sometimes I forget how smart you are.”

“Idiot,” Ed mutters, cheeks warm. It must be the summer heat. “How do you forget something like that?”

Roy smiles fondly and says, “Maybe it’s because the bookshelf nearly toppled over you this morning when you were trying to—” 

_“Who are you calling so short that he can’t reach the top shelf? So tiny that he has to use the bottom shelf as a stepping stool—”_

Roy pats Ed’s head softly, and Ed feels all the anger float away. He hates it, hates how after all these years, he’s still so weak when it comes to this stupid, incapable alchemist who’s useless without his gloves, even with the Truth in his arsenal. Hates how _Roy wannabe-Fuhrer Mustang_ still sometimes makes him feel like he’s eleven years old again, eleven years old with a crush on the cool, powerful alchemist who drafted him into the fucking military.

“Fuck you,” Ed barks, but he doesn’t feel as angry as he was before.

“Later, maybe,” Roy says dismissively, now running his boney fingers through Ed’s hair. _Obsessive bastard,_ Ed thinks, though he makes an effort not to tie it up or anything when they’re home together, just because Roy so obviously likes playing with it.

“So, are we fucking done with this conversation, asshole?”

Roy chuckles. “You never answered my question, Edward.”

Ed grimaces. “Why are you so hung up on this?”

A moment passes, lingers, sticks to Ed’s skin, and then Roy is saying, “Because it isn’t really fair, you know? You were fifteen—” 

“Eleven when I attempted human transmutation.”

Roy frowns, and he cups Edward’s cheek. Carefully, tenderly. “Still too young for any of it. Alchemy—I know it isn’t everything to you, and I know that you didn’t even _want_ to get swept up into the whole military thing in the first place, but—you had to carry the burden of the saving the country—”

“Fuck all of that,” Ed mumbles, gently pulling Roy’s hand away away from his face. “You’re right. Alchemy isn’t and was never _everything_ to me. And the burden of saving the country—no, I wouldn’t call it a burden. Just, a responsibility, maybe.”

Roy takes Ed’s hand and squeezes it in his. “I don’t think you need me to tell you how brilliant you were at alchemy. It still isn’t fair that you had to lose it.”

Ed hums at that. Roy is right; the sacrifices he’s made—none of them have been fair.

But that’s just how life is; that’s just how Ed has come to understand the world.

Alchemy was nothing more than a beautiful, beautiful medium through which he and Al learned to understand the world. And though Ed misses it sometimes, a lot of the time—

“I don’t regret it,” Ed says quietly. “It’s different. With me and Al. It’s different.”

The only thing Edward regrets when it comes to Al is roping him into attempting human transmutation in the first place. It should’ve just been Ed, he should’ve done it alone—

Brushing Ed’s knuckles with a thumb, Roy looks at him with these gentle, sad eyes. Not pitying, though, Ed probably would’ve broken up with Roy a long time ago if he _ever_ pitied him.

So Ed goes on.

“If . . . if I’d given up my alchemy to do something _stupid_ like save Amestris, or the government, or even the world—”

“Stupid?” Roy snorts, a half-smirk on his face that soon falls once he realizes that Ed means it.

And it takes him a while to figure out how to word what he wants to say, but this is something he’s always known, probably.

“If I had given up my alchemy to save or bring back anyone _but_ Al, or maybe even Winry—yeah, I’d probably regret it.”

And then there’s the unsaid: _Even you. If I had given up my alchemy to save you, I’d probably regret it._

But Roy just—nods. Accepts it with those dark, kind, compassionate eyes of his. Maybe a part of him has always known this too. 

“It’s different with them. When it comes to them, when it comes to _Al_ . . . ”

This is where the conversation shifts, changes, transforms into something that it was always going to be; it was inevitable for them to have this conversation one day.

“Ed, you don’t need to—”

The linen sheets underneath them are warm from the heat of their bodies. Summer is making its way into Central, and Ed has spent so many years here and away from Resembool and Pinako and Winry that he’s forgotten the heat he grew up in, the days he spent rolling around in grass fields, lying on scorched earth. He’s changed—undoubtedly Ed has changed. He’s in a long-term relationship with his former commanding officer and not his childhood sweetheart; he hasn’t seen his brother in a year—it’s the longest they’ve ever spent away from each other; and he doesn’t have alchemy.

Alchemy, Al, and Winry—the three pillars he grew up with, the three pillars he once thought he’d never have to live without, the three pillars he happens to be void of now.

But there is one thing that still hasn’t changed.

“The only thing I wouldn’t give up for Al is my life,” Ed mutters. He isn’t looking at Roy; he’s looking forward, straight-forward like he’s done his entire life.

Looking straight-forward; Edward Elric has never had the luxury to do otherwise.

Ed smiles and looks down at his right arm, his left leg. He smiles, mostly to himself, mostly at the thought of finally saying it out loud, finally telling Roy the words he’s been too afraid to tell Al. 

“Only ‘cause that means I’d be leaving him alone,” Ed says, “and I can’t, I _won’t_ do that to him. Can’t leave him like everyone else in our life has left us.”

But—maybe that’s a lie— 

Al, he transmuted his _soul_ for Ed’s right arm, for Ed’s _life,_ but it still isn’t the same. He did that because he believed in Ed, believed that Ed would get him back, but the thing is—

If it came to it, if it _really_ came to it—

Ed would’ve done it even if there wasn’t a chance he’d be coming back. If there really was no other choice, if it really was Al or him, no Al _and_ him, he would choose Al in a heartbeat.

It’s funny because Al is the selfless one and Ed—Ed is as selfish as you can get.

Al always says that Ed has self-worth issues; Ed doesn’t see it that way. He just—knows that some things are worth more than others, that equivalent exchange doesn’t apply to human beings—he knows that now, he learned it when he was eleven and he’s continued to learn it each and every day since.

“You know what I asked the Gate to take from me the first time?” Ed asks. He’s getting a little frantic, voice panicked, strained, high. He can’t help it; he hates thinking about this because he _knows_ it’s terrible, knows that this isn’t something that you should tell the person you’re in love with, the person who loves you more than he loves anyone else in the world.

But god. _God,_ is it a relief to finally fucking say it. Finally admit it to someone other than himself, someone other than that asshole at the Gate: the Truth, the World, One, All.

“I’m sorry,” Roy blurts out before Ed can say it out loud.

_Everything._

You shouldn’t tell the person who would give up everything for you that you wouldn’t give up everything for them—but you would give it up for someone else.

But Roy already knows, probably. He’s always had a knack for knowing these sorts of things without even being told. Unlike Ed, who needs Al or Winry to spell things out for him when it comes to human emotions, human fucking beings.

Trying to transmute his mother, seeking the philosopher’s stone to get his brother’s body back, _not_ taking Hohenheim’s offer at the end of the Promised Day, every goal that Ed has tirelessly worked toward—it was all for the same reason, really.

Just like ambition is Roy’s driving force, _family_ is Ed’s.

Roy knows it, and he’s okay with it. He’s okay with coming second or third, because he knows that doesn’t mean he’s worth any less. It doesn’t make sense and the math doesn’t work out and it frustrates Ed to hell that equivalent exchange doesn’t work with people, with feelings, that the founding principle of something that Ed _loves_ dearly is _wrong,_ faulty, unreliable.

Roy on the other hand—he accepts it as truth and doesn’t try to change or challenge it. Doesn’t try to play fucking _god_ like Ed did all those years ago. He just plays the game, and he plays it smartly.

You see, Roy already knows what Ed would and wouldn’t do—maybe this was just an attempt at confirmation, at understanding because knowing the truth is nowhere near understanding it. When Ed gained the Truth, it felt like he lost everything. And now without it—he feels more complete than he ever was with it.

“Why the fuck are _you_ sorry?” Ed winces when he hears how rough his voice is, when he notices how hard it is for him to choke the words out without letting his voice crack. Crack just like the rest of him.

Maybe what Ed said before _does_ apply to him too; maybe a part of him _does_ believe that it would be better to be broken all the way rather than—than _this._ White scars, fractured bones, and glinting metal—but still in one piece, still _whole._

But Roy—Roy has never seen him like that. Roy saw an eleven year old who just lost two limbs and his first thought was to draft him into the military. It’s ridiculous, everything about Roy is ridiculous. Despite all the loss, all that _Ed_ has lost—all that Ed has sacrificed—Roy has never seen him as anything but a fellow state alchemist, his talented subordinate, and later, his lover.

Roy’s hand is on Edward’s cheek again, a thumb stroking under his eye and Ed doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand why he’s repeating that gentle motion over and over again—until he realizes that Roy’s wiping tears away, that Ed has started crying at some point without even realizing it, that there’s so much Ed has _buried_ under all the flesh and metal and iron that makes up who he is. 

“I didn’t mean to dig this up,” Roy says, remorseful, and Ed knows he means it. More than anyone—maybe not Hawkeye, though—Ed can tell when Roy is telling the truth.

Ed lets him continue thumbing underneath his waterline, even if there aren’t anymore tears, really—he likes it. He likes the warmth, likes the way Roy’s hands are always so soft because he’s always wearing gloves, always making Hawkeye and Havoc and even Ed, back then, do his dirty work for him. He likes it, as much as he hates to admit it. Eventually, though, Ed pries his hand away once more, but this time, he’s the one to lace their fingers together and squeeze. Alchemy is a little like this, Ed thinks. Connecting all the parts that make up the array, and once the array is done, all it needs is a little squeeze to come together. He tried to explain this to Winry one time—he even held her hand and everything to make a point. Winry just squirmed and complained about his hand being sweaty.

“Don’t worry about it, idiot,” Ed breathes. Roy is too caring for his own good, really. When the bastard does make Fuhrer, at least Ed knows Amestris will be in good hands. “It’s better that you asked than let it grow into something bigger.”

When Roy kisses Ed’s cheek, Ed wriggles and frowns, embarrassed, but it makes him realize that the panic is all gone, that his heart has finally calmed down, slow and steady. A constant reminder that despite everything—despite Father and the Homunculi and God and _himself_ —he is still alive. Alive and kicking.

“Thank you,” Roy says. “For indulging my stupid question.”

The miserable puppy-dog look on his face makes Ed want to sock him in the gut and kiss him breathless. Maybe both at the same time. _Dear god._

“You ask me stupid questions all the time. About alchemy, especially,” Ed mumbles, trying to lighten up the mood. He isn’t very good at it, but he’ll try anything if it’s for Roy. “It’s amazing how I still know more about alchemy than you, and I can’t even _do_ it anymore.”

“Mean,” Roy whines, pouting. The youngest general in Amestris’ history is _pouting._

Ed’s heart stutters violently. With the hand that isn’t holding Roy’s, he grabs his boyfriend’s face, smushing his cheeks, lips making a funny kissy face now. Roy’s eyes widen, and he looks a little ridiculous, honestly, but Ed grins at the sight.

He grins, squeezes Roy’s hand, and kisses him on the mouth. Hard and forceful, and it’s more of an attack than anything, but Roy is laughing, grinning too, and he ends up taking both of Edward’s hands in his, ends up pushing Edward onto his back, ends up on top of Edward, knees caged around his stomach.

And _good_ _god_ does Ed find it fucking _hot_ when Mustang does shit like that. But then—

“Are we okay?” Roy asks, a careful look in his eyes, once again reminding Ed how more than anything, he’s really just a stupid, sappy romantic.

Ed rolls his eyes, and in an easy show of force, flips them over so that he’s the one on top. “Dumbass. You need me to _show_ you just how okay we are?”

Roy’s eyes sparkle, but there is no mystery to them. There almost never is.

Ed’s life is very different now: before his mother died, he always assumed he would spend the rest of his days in Resembool with Al and Winry and Pinako, living a quiet life in the eastern countryside. Afterwards, even after becoming a dog of the military, upheaving his life and traveling all over Amestris—even then, he always imagined he would go back one day after getting his and Al’s bodies back. But here Edward is—in bed with the man who drafted him into the military in the apartment they share in Central while Winry is back east in Resembool and Al is even farther east in Xing—here he is, and somehow, there isn’t a thing about it he regrets. 

“I’d love nothing more, Fullmetal.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed my poorly disguised attempt to ramble about royed and the elric brothers <3


End file.
